The Global chat...so sad

Age of Conan General Discussion
34

@Delred I agree with you that a thicker skin is a good thing on the internet.

But I want to add that the “freedom of speech” idea, meaning in a public space you can say whatever you want, wherever you want to whomever you want, is a concept mainly accepted and lived in the United States. In most other countries it means something slightly different: The right to voice your opinion without the fear to be punished for it, specifically in a political context, but not the right to say absolutly anything. Hate speech, defamination, threats, lies, things that offend the morality of the specific community and so on are under punishment or vorbidden in a lot of countries, in public and private spaces. People who are not from the United States often have a different view and a different opinion about “freedom of speech” than US cittizens, and that is why they are offended much faster by words, and have a different concept of decency when it comes to communication.
So while the “if words can hurt you you are not tough enough for the internet”-idea maybe something US citizens feel very comfortable with, citizens of most other countries are used to and often demand certain rules when communicating. This is by far not evidential, but you can see the behavior and style change in the global chat depending on the time zones. At US prime time you will see a completely different global than in EU prime time (generally speaking). If you want to know more about this differences in the point of view about “freedom of speech” in developed countries google about hate speech on facebook, and how Europe (esp. Germany) and the US try to come together regarding the censoreship and/or punishment for hate speech.

Also we should not forget, that neither the game nor this forum is a public space, it is a private space created by and owned by Funcom, so the company has every right to enforce rules to their liking. Actually, most of the spaces where more than 2 people communicate on the internet are not a public, but owned spaces, and if those spaces are censored or moderated is totally up to their owners.

Wall of text end.

Ignore is good :heart_eyes: Give us accountwide ignore/friendlists!

3 Likes
35

Well said. Freedom of speech does not cover privately owned spaces.

1 Like
36

Handing out a few suspensions to some individuals talking in Global would do wonders.

37

@zaldar They do hand out suspensions for violating the terms of service agreement. You are free to peruse these terms at any time to know what one can or cant get away with in global or any messaging system in game. I know a guy who got banned for saying a homophobic slur to someone in a private message. Generally hate speech is a bannable offense, homophobic slurs, racism, etc. Profane sexual harassment is a big one. Like if someone says something like “you can just suck my ****!” for example. that would be considered profane sexual harassment and if reported to the gms would result in a suspension. There are loopholes to these rules that are exploited of course. Some people know how to skirt the thin line between offending folks and getting a ban.

38

I would very much like an account wide ignore and friend list…

K

39

I would like an account wide ignore option as well where not only does the individual name that I added to my ignore list gets populated to all other characters on my account … but also ALL the characters in the account of the person I just ignored also gets added to the ignore list to my account characters. Even if this has be done per server.

This would also make ignoring the gold-selling spam easier

1 Like
40

Not only would I like it account wide, but should X number of players ignore someone, they lose global/NPH/LFG for 24 hours.

1 Like
42

Yeah that would definitely be abused, just imagine all I need to do is get 10 of my buddies to put someone like you on ignore for no good reason other than to troll you and then you can’t use Global for 24 hours. Brilliant idea…:roll_eyes:

43

This would add no value to the game. You can simply ignore players as it is. An account wide ignore function would serve no purpose except to encourage laziness.

44

Or you know, people could just not act like complete jackasses. Pull that crap in real life and you are likely to get the crap beat out of you :slight_smile:

45

Sure and then the attacker gets charged with assault regardless if he/she is successful in said attack. Everyone on the internet is a tough guy amirite bro :wink:

46

I disagree that it would not add value to the game … for a group/raid leader this would enable them to put a person who has caused them problems onto ignore on all that persons characters across all their characters so that they do not have to deal with them again.

1 Like
47

and dogs should stop licking their balls. You talk about utopia

51

Where did I say I was going to go beat up someone in real life?

I only stated that if people talked like that in real life, someone would probably not care too much for it and you might have a situation.

But over the internet, people can more or less get away with anything, which is a sad commentary for people, but it is reality.

52

Jarafin is correct. Freedom of speech is a contract between the government and its citizenry and does not extend to private or publicly traded business.